Flannery O'Connor: limitations?

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the essay "Flannery's Kiss" by Mary Gordon (link here), which I initially found in searching for information about how Flannery lived out her celibacy, but stayed for that and other thought-provoking observations, which I recorded in my notepad. Here's one I found especially noteworthy:

O'Connor does not allow her characters to feel the pain of loss. They are denied the experience of grieving. I have often wondered if people are more comfortable with violence than with grief: violence is sharp, clear, bounded; grief can be eternal; it percolates and permutates. Its path is gradual and slow. It's the kind of thing that, as an artist, O'Connor can't do. She's no good at denouement, and she can't do the consequences of an act that follow onto a lived life. It is one of the failures of her craft; a failure unusual in so exigent a craftsman. Her stories, as she says, are romances, in the tradition of Hawthorne. She is interested in the climactic moment, not in the consequences of the climax. She is interested in redemption, but not in forgiveness. Consider the vast tonal difference in the two words: redemption and forgiveness. Consider the differences in temperature. Redemption is a fire that burns; forgiveness is a cooling poultice; it relieves. The sentence "I have been redeemed," is very different from "My sins have been forgiven." The first sentence speaks only of imposition; the second suggests agency. In Catholic sacramentology, sins can only be forgiven in the sacrament if the sinner asks forgiveness. As we all go on sinning, we must constantly be forgiven. Indeed re-forgiven. Redemption took place once in history; forgiveness must be relived. At the end of the sacrament of penance, the priest tells the penitent to "go in peace." This sentence is impossible to imagine in a story of Flannery O'Connor's.

I recommend the whole essay.

Edit: I find the essay more interesting in what it reveals about O'Connor; I disagree with some of the positions and opinions put forward by Gordon.